Accurately identifying callers is an important part of any secure system. When a customer calls their bank, the bank will need to take steps to ensure that the caller is an authenticated user. Some callers may pretend to be a banking customer, but they are really seeking to defraud the bank by transferring money to another account or gaining access to a customer's banking information. A fraudulent caller may also contact a cable company or cell phone company to gain access to a customer's credit card information or other personal information. This leads to significant costs to banks, credit cards, financial institutions, and any other entity that needs to authenticate users, not to mention the loss and hassle to actual customers.
As a result, financial institutions take a number of steps to accurately identify a caller. A financial institution typically will ask a caller their name, date of birth, address, and other identifying information such as their mother's maiden name. This information, however, is readily available through internet sources, making it fairly easy for a fraudulent caller to imitate an actual customer. Financial institutions may therefore ask even more information of a caller, such as their last four digits of their social security number, their account numbers, and other identifying information. This additional information provides some enhanced level of security, but can still fall into the wrong hands, resulting in unauthorized access to private accounts. Asking numerous identifying questions also consumes the time of call center operators. Many financial institutions receive tens of thousands of calls per day, or more, so adding even thirty seconds to each call results in significant costs to operate a call center. Customers also become frustrated with having to repeatedly answer identifying questions.
Accordingly, systems and methods for identifying a customer are needed that can accurately identify customers without relying solely on information that can easily fall into the hands of unauthorized users.